Religion is widely different from this : it is a conver- sion of the soul to God ; it is a resurrection from the dead : it is a new creation. Religion, as it exists in the soul, is a heaven-born principle, that pervades all its powers, and operates in all its faculties. It is to the soul what the soul is to the body. It restrains our passions, corrects our appetites, purifies our affec- tions. It enters into all our motives, and subjects every thing to itself It will endure no rival : it will make a truce with no enemy : it will reign absolute over the whole man. Its avowed object is to bring man to God as a redeemed sinner, and to restore him to a meetness for that inheritance which he has for- feited by his transgressions : in order to accomplish this, it casts down every high and towering imagina- tion, brings its votary to the foot of the cross, con- strains him to walk in the steps of his divine Master, and progressively transforms him into the image of his God.
Compare this with the slight and worthless thing which men in general call religion, and it will appear that they use the term without any just apprehension of its true import.
Again ; as religion is esteemed a superficial thing, so it is also deemed a melancholy thing. When true religion is described, the generality of men are ready to exclaim against it as incompatible with social hap- piness : ' If we must repent of our past sins, and enter on a course of mortification and self-denial ; if we must renounce the pleasures of sin, and the society of the migodly ; if we must converse familiarly with death and judgment, and spend our lives in prepara- tion for eternity ; what remains for us in this world but gloom and melancholy?' So they think.
But is this the light in which the Scriptures speak of religion ? or are these notions justified by expe- rience ? We allow the premises to be correct ; but is the conclusion just? Suppose for a moment that the whole life of a person who appeared religious, were a scene of melancholy : must that melancholy be imputed to religion ? Must it not rather be imputed